


Life Debt

by Pyrohydra



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Bond (Minor Hint), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21520531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrohydra/pseuds/Pyrohydra
Summary: "Hello Uncle"Some life debts last longer than others.  And some cut both ways.
Relationships: Chewbacca & Kylo Ren, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Life Debt

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this up after the release of The Force Awakens, and now, with the last movie on the horizon, decided to finally be brave and post up my first fanfiction. 
> 
> Speech in Shyrriwook is marked with square brackets.
> 
> Cannon compliant only through The Force Awakens.

He can't help but wonder at times if his entire life has been some form of cosmic joke. That he would strive and strive, sacrifice that which he once held so dear, give up everything he was to emulate his grandfather, and ultimately the only way he ultimately succeeded would be in how he met his death.

His father had been right in the end, and if it wasn't so painful it would have been hilarious.

He'd felt the change of course, when his Master no longer saw him as a useful continuing asset, and more as something to be used up and tossed aside. This final betrayal burned within him, and that at least was useful, adding strength to his limbs and power to his blows. But there was always the idle thought that perhaps the first betrayal between Snoke and himself was, perhaps, on his end. The girl had certainly been a part of it, too much hesitation on ending her in the past, and the faint, near altruistic desire to take her under his wing, to make her great. He'd always tried just a bit too hard to prove himself, and perhaps it had damned him in both his fall from the Light, and later from the Dark.

Still, Kylo Ren was almost certain his doom had been sealed with the death of Han Solo.

And so the Knight of Ren found himself on what would have, not that long ago, been the what he considered the wrong side of the final battle. It was painfully poetic, the Master, the Apprentice and the one who would not be swayed to the Dark. Just like Vader. One more cataclysmic choice he had made, and it was likely his last.

Time slows as he saw the one potential crack in Snoke's defenses. His (former) Master is pressing hard on the girl, and her attempts to parry his attacks are beginning to slow. Even an old fossil like the ancient force adept cannot help but indulge a little bloodlust - the darkness in him runs far too deep. A small break in the attacks would give the girl the time to strike, but, Kylo knows what price he'll have to pay to take advantage of this. He feints, dropping his defense to score a hit on Snoke's raised arm. He can see the snarl on his adversary's face (about time Snoke lost some composure) as he turns and lifts the Knight off he feet with an application of the Force that tastes of rage and disappointment on Kylo's tongue. He slams into the cavern wall and bounces off the surface, the impact driving the breath from his lungs so that he doesn't even have a chance to scream when he falls upon a stalagmite below, the cold stone tearing into and through his gut.

He remembers a snowy forest, a long time ago, and a much younger version of Rey being tossed against a tree trunk just barely missing impaling herself on a jagged branch. He can't really recall if Jedi simply have all the luck, or if, at the time, Kylo Ren had deliberately missed.

And there is the girl's, no, Jedi's opening. His Master takes a moment to verify his attack's success, and the Knight can feel Snoke's vicious satisfaction fade as she dances into a flurry of attacks pushing the old one back.

Pain darken's Kylo's vision and he funnels that into raw, ragged power. Most is spent keeping the blood flow slow, and his brain from spinning into shock, but he hoards the scraps he doesn't need to stay alive and waits. And when Snoke's attention is purely on Rey, writing off the Knight of Ren as dead or close enough to it to not matter, all it takes is one last burst of rage and a faint push on the old Master's back towards the Jedi's light saber... and it is done, the light fading from the old one's eyes turned in almost bemused surprise at the burning hole in his chest.

Rey take's Snoke's head clean off his shoulders for good measure. Smart woman. Wasted as a Jedi, but it still gives him a little flicker of warmth to at least see that she will be a great one.

The downside, of course, to all of this is that his pain has started to fade, never a good sign, and the source of his rage is now nothing but cooling meat. And he is so very tired besides. Things are feeling quite far away, and sounds echo strangely as Rey turns, sees properly the state he is in and starts running his way. He rouses somewhat as she reaches him, kneels at his side and her hands quest to where he is impaled. He can feel the faint crackling warmth as she tries to stabilize him. Kylo Ren watches with a bemused gaze as the alarmingly large pool of his blood soaks into her robes. In this light it almost looks black.

He manages a crooked smile, the scar she gave him so long ago pulling faintly on his lips, and manages to touch her shoulder with a shaking hand. "Go. I think we both know this is how it ends. Tell my mother that you were rig..."

She slaps him, quite hard, the sound ringing in his ears and the crisp pain giving some brief clarity. It should anger him, but all he manages is a faint feeling of fondness for her located in the general direction of his chest. "No, you aren't getting off this easy. Wake. Up. I can tell you somehow find this whole thing stupidly poetic, and that is a load of bantha dung. If I can get you off this thing, and stop the bleeding there are more medical supplies on the Falcon. And that is... only a few miles walk through tunnels. I'm sure I carried worse back when I was on Jakku, half starved and low on water. So just cooperate with me here." She continues on with a litany of steps she'll have to take as her hands work.

The faint rumbling of stone falling breaks her train of thought. "Wonderful, collapsing tunnels. Just making this day extra special. Probably a failsafe of Snoke's if he died..."

He usefully comments that it isn't going to work, he'll simply bleed out faster this way. But the stubborn woman has a functional field medical kit with quick seal within it that could slow down the blood loss and a shocking amount of stims. He still doubts he'll last with as little blood as he has left, but, well, it would be ridiculous for both of them to die here and, with him either dying or as a corpse, she'll be moving the right direction at least. So with the last of his dying (ha) strength, he helps her lever him off the twisting stone that had been lodged in his abdomen. Kylo hears the last of it clear the wound with a decidedly sickening squelching noise, which is quickly replaced by the hiss of her applying the quick seal.

They start to struggle to get him to his feet when he realizes he can neither feel nor move his legs. He is only mildly surprised he hadn't noticed in his previous state, he had been rather distracted, and is light headed enough that all he really feels at the moment is amusement that he can't recall ever hearing Jedi Knight Rey giving quite such a colorful string of curses as they both fall back to the ground. He is almost certain she must have learned half of them from Chewbacca, especially the ones involving beating misfortune to death with its own limbs. His vision is darkening again, the stims seem to be doing precious little for shock, he had started the fight exhausted and burnt through most of the rest of what he had with that last push. Rey is struggling to get back up on her feet, really, she has barely enough strength to move herself, let alone carry him out of here. The battle had taken most of her too.

Pointless.

Stupid.

She is going to die here too, and that would simply be an inane waste. The two of them are hardly friends, at best allies of necessity who have spent far too long as rivals, enemies. Each of them have left a tapestry of scars upon the other. He can still taste the flicker of hate in her heart caused by his Father's death at his hands. One of them should survive this "victory." So he takes that slow dying ember of rage that is in his heart. He can almost see it in his mind's eye, a dying light in the palm of a hand being fed now by a faint breath passions. He feeds it the old rage that lead him down this path to his death. He feeds it the anger at his own impending death. He feeds it the love and disappointment that colored his thoughts of his parents, his uncles. He feeds it his base passions. He feeds it the gnawing guilt and fractured frailty he has carried since that day on the Starkiller where he struck down his father. He feeds it the raw hatred of his own self weakness. He feeds it his fear of the end. He feeds it his desire to see the light of a sun one more time. And it blooms into an inferno of raw power.

Rey is exhausted, her normally monumental mental defenses painfully low. She barely even feels him there. It's nostalgic, the odd connection that has been there for years, since that day they first met, hums to life under his gaze. The ties of fate hum. And Kylo Ren pushes one last time. A simple compulsion placed in her mind, to go, leave him, run, survive, live to walk in the light again. And the rest goes into funneling every last scrap of his strength to keep her path swift and true.

"Goodbye Rey, have a good life."

Its everything he has, and its the least he can do.

The blackness yawns up at him, blinks its sleepy eyes, and swallow's Kylo Ren whole.

And so does Kylo Ren meet his end.

*****

He cannot see, but he can tell he is in his father's arms. All he can hear are his father's steps and the faint occasional whisper in the darkness. He feels small again, like he was before things started to fall apart. Before the faint sliver of fear entered his mother's love, before his father gaze started to turn back to the stars to escape the growing strife. Before the words, "too much of Vader within him," ever touched anyone's lips.

His father's gait is sure, striding forward, his arms strong, warm and curled around him as he carries him forward. He has no strength to resist left to keep it tamped down anymore, so he can feel the flickers of grief pass through him. 

"You were right, Father."

The steps slow for a moment, and then continue walking. He tries to open his eyes, but his eyelids are far too heavy.

"I never thanked you, for coming for me. I never thought you actually would."

The fingers tighten briefly on his arm.

"For the first time, it was so clear. I could feel your love, your desire to bring me home, to fix what had been broken between us. I wish... I wish I had listened. I'd thought you were a weakness I had to carve out when you were a strength. I'm sorry, I should have never..."

He can feel a faint rumble in his father's chest and a deep exhalation of breath ghosts over his face.

The darkness swallows him again.

*****

A loud bang, glaring light and a jagged return of pain rouse him. He tries and fails to blink in surprise, his eyes crusted nearly shut as he is placed carefully on what might be a chair. He can smell engine oil, stale recycled air and feels rough, worn leather on his face. Time passes, and in this state he can't tell how long.

He can hear the Jedi's voice talking about getting the hyperdrive back up now that the are in orbit.

He grabs hold of the reawakened pain, twists it into fuel, and reopens his eyes to the sight of Chewbacca, his fur tinted red with (likely his) blood, digging through a med kit, emptying out the contents onto the table. His clothes have been cut open, the wounds dressed more thoroughly. A brief flicker of confused panic shoots through his veins as the wookiee meets his gaze. 

A faint growl, ending in "[Do not try anything foolish, boy.]" The wookiee doesn't quite meet his gaze, instead Chewie seems to be looking over his great furred hands, crusts of drying blood still stuck to the fur. He doesn't even have to reach out to feel the maelstrom of emotions. Love, hate, rage, guilt, flashes of memories, something small, precious and delicate in taloned hands looking back at its new Uncle, and dark bridges in the light of a dying star. Impossible choices and debts left unpaid. Raw, ragged pain.

"Why am I not dead?"

"[I found Rey, and she said she'd had to leave you back there. So we went back, and I carried you here, nothing more, nothing less, child.]" He could tell there was more to it than that, but he left it for now.

"That wasn't what I meant."

He watches as those massive paws that once upon a time had led him (little hands just barely big enough to wrap around one clawed finger), back home after he had gotten lost in the woods, take the empty med kit's metal casing and twist it until it snapped. Chewbacca snarls, crumples it into a ball and throws it with a roar against the opposite wall. It hits the wall on the opposite with a sad little clatter.

It reminds him, just a little, of rooms torn asunder by lightsaber. He doesn't think he's seen Chewie's rage so out in the open before - he'd never thought it would taste so similar to his own, albeit with far more control behind it.

He can see Rey peek her head into the room. Rey quickly assesses the situation and calls the wookiee back with a likely exaggerated request for his piloting assistance. Chewbacca mutters something under his breath he can't quite make out, spends a moment to grab one last ampoule and apply it to once again throbbing wound, and stalks out of the room. The returned pain begins to fade, and he can feel his eyelids grow heavy again.

It still all feels quite unreal, like the dreams of a dying mind. The only solid, true, thing he can sense is his adoptive uncle's rage in the cockpit, bitterly shot through with softer emotions. The rage isn't just directed at him, some small part of it is turned inwards. And with that confusing thought, he sleeps.

*****

The next few days, weeks, perhaps months are a blur of medical treatment and he suspects drugged containment. He regains the use of his legs with relative speed, great relief, and without a need for substantial cybernetics. Someone mentioned there was a quiet trial of some sorts. He wasn't invited. They aren't killing him for now (which would have been, in his opinion, rather ironic after all the fuss keeping him alive).

His mother comes by almost every day, though he rarely sees her, only feels her presence, watching. The only time she has touched him was when he was first brought in, and in his stupor he could feel her running a hand over his brow. She tastes of anger, sorrow and love. He is grateful she hasn't spoken to him yet, he isn't sure what he could say. Its hard enough to understand what he feels or wants anymore, explaining it would be near impossible. And there is nothing he could say to actually make it right between them.

He hasn't seen Rey since he woke up in Medical.

He heals quickly, the Force still with him. 

They occasionally try to call him Kylo Ren, but he finds himself unwilling to respond to that name. He felt its owner die after all. The staff ask him at one point what they should call him instead, and he really doesn't know. Nor does he really care.

On occasion an interrogator comes to debrief him. He can feel Luke Skywalker watching these sessions, making sure he doesn't try to manipulate the men and women they are sending into the room with him. There is little point in holding back, he doubts information he has is relevant enough anymore to buy him anything, most pertains to the activities of Snoke and that one is quite departed. And let the First Order burn anyway. He doesn't care anymore.

He gets the fleeting impression from what little he can get away with skimming from their minds that, at least to the interrogators, they are likely to keep him imprisoned ("contained") indefinitely. This is, of course, not a tenable situation. He may have turned against his (second) Master. He may honestly have no real desire to tear down their little recovering Republic. However...

He will not be caged. He'll die first.

They don't give him much fuel to work with really. He is kept out of pain, the food is acceptable, the bare basic cell is at least comfortable and neither too cold or warm. There is even a reasonable selection of literature he can call up on a view screen. He idly wonders if that is his mother's doing or if the Republic is that kind to its prisoners. But still, frustration is not a terrible passion to start with and build into power. He paces in the room like a penned rancor, slowly letting the emotion build. And there are always more flavorful resources to plumb for strength as his body recovers. He is still full of wrath, mainly at himself these days. And the quiet hasn't done much for his dreams, well, nightmares, and being away from everything of significance is, interestingly enough, an excellent source of guilt and self loathing.

He thinks of his mother, and the quiet love for her that he could never quite throw away and finds it a surprising source of strength. 

He'll leave, quietly, when they have relaxed their guard and Master Skywalker no longer visits the place everyday. He can probably do it without requiring the death of any guards. It would seem somewhat crass to kill them at this point - none have even tried to abuse or torture him. He tries to ignore that this is by far not the only reason he would prefer to avoid deaths. Some on the early morning shift seem to have the easiest to manipulate minds (small tests, scratch your ear, go for a break ~now~ had shown this). He can feel the oddness in his body where a tracking transmitter had been implanted. It would be the work of moments to cut it out once if he can find something small and sharp, and several guards look to have boot knives. And this is no empty planet, only a mile or so away he can feel the vast brush of minds that signals a metropolis... and a space port.

No, this really will not be hard at all once the moment is right.

*****

It goes all quite smoothly really. One guard is on a "break" that will last far longer than he realizes. The other is sitting in his former cell, happily staring at a wall holding his removed transmitter. He'll have a few hours before they wake from their trance. The facility has other guards of course, plenty of them, but it is trivial to pass unseen. He has grown strong over the years, and learning to shield himself from the senses of his rather cunning young rival Jedi Rey is quite applicable to hiding from mundane senses. The competition was healthy for him, he thinks. The droids he simply avoids, having plucked their set routes out of the guard's minds quite a while ago. A guard's small knife hangs at his belt, and a rather fine blaster rests in his hands. Lightsabers may be a more elegant weapon and all of that, but, well, he is Han Solo's son and he learned to shoot a blaster long before he even knew what a lightsaber was. There was a reason one of the first tricks, call it showy and wasteful if you like, was to stop a blaster bolt in its path.

He ignores the other high profile First Order prisoners that were being kept on the other floors of this prison. That organization is in his past, and, besides, none of those here are those he held any kind of respect for.

Honestly, it is going far too well.

Sometimes he hates being right.

It happens just as he leaves the prison, making for the small transportation hanger which should have _something_ suitable to get him to the spaceport. Suddenly he can feel the almost overwhelming presence of Chewbacca, and a flicker that must be a still hiding Rey. He only has a moment to be impressed at how well she had shielded both herself and the wookiee from him, when a furry paw grabs him about his throat and slams him, hard, against the wall. The other hand wraps around the wrist of his hand holding the blaster. He compromises and drops the blaster. It really isn't worth getting a hand ripped off for.

He just doesn't have it in him to fight. Not Chewbacca. Not Rey. "Hello Uncle."

The wookiee's eyes narrow, "[Anyone other than you, anyone, I would be honor bound to kill. And I would do so with relish.]" The hand shakes him once, "[Do you understand that, child?]"

The pressure on his throat is surprisingly light if firm, and he manages to whisper, "Yes." The rage that had filled the wookiee before is now a banked fire, still there, but tempered by a complex collection of emotions.

Chewbacca's growling voice is barely above a whisper, and he strains for comprehension even after lifetime of understanding the nuances of Shyriiwook. "[So now we come to a choice you have to make. Kylo Ren? Or Ben? Ben, son of Han who was my dearest friend, brother, and holder of my life debt, a son who now owes one of his own to me, for both the loss of Han and the saving of his own life. Or, Kylo... Kylo murdered my brother, who if he escapes justice, leaves this planet, I will swear that the next time I see him I would seek his death. So chose, child, who are you?]"

The moment hangs between them, heavy and thick. He can hear birdsong in the distance as the dawn approaches, the first rays of this planet's sun creeping over the horizon.

"Kylo Ren..." he feels the hand at his throat tense very slightly and release, "Kylo Ren is dead, and gone, and ashes. He died with his Master weeks ago. But... I do not know if Ben survived his father."

He can feel Chewbacca's rumbling growl, and hears a faint sigh. "[Good enough for now, child. Then you will come with me, and you can figure what you are at least until I release you from your debt. Do you understand?]"

He nods, and slides slowly down the wall as the wookiee's grasp loosens. Chewbacca glances over at where Rey waits in the distance. She nods, and he realizes she must have been searching his feelings for intent. She always did have an uncanny knack for reading him like no other. She smiles at the wookiee, "Good luck Chewie." 

He meets her gaze just as she starts to turn and walk away, "Why?"

"You get a chance. One, single, chance. We'll meet again either way."

Speeders are there waiting for he and his Uncle. No signs of pursuit all the way to the Millennium Falcon. He wonders if this is his mother's doing. He wonders if he should have talked to her before this. The ship's interior looks almost the same as when he was growing up. He could almost expect his father to come strutting out of the cockpit. But there is a chair that, while cleaned, still has the bloodstains from weeks ago. And the old ship feels quiet, perhaps waiting for a Master who hasn't returned.

The ghosts of memory help him through quick preflight checks, Chewbacca in the pilot seat which once belonged to his father. The wookiee pauses for a moment before finalizing the launch, looking over at him. There is little anger left, just raw, aching grief. He feels small in the copilot's chair, as small as the little boy running through his Uncle Chewy's thoughts. His view of the planet dropping away as they ascend to the stars is blurred, his eyes sting, and he rubs at them with the heels of his palms. It helps, a little. He feels his uncle's massive hand on his shoulder, and after a brief hesitation, reaches up his own hand to grip it as they rise.

Ben can almost feel the touch of his father's hand on his face when they make the jump to hyperspace.

**Author's Note:**

> Many people have written some glorious Star Wars fanfiction based on the sequel trilogy, but one thing I haven't often was stories dealing with both Chewbacca's grief and how *complicated* his feelings on Kylo Ren would be, the son of his best friend but also his killer. Someone he likely held in those big paws when they were a tiny child. This story (and many thoughts about where it could lead) was the result.


End file.
